Nearly 150 blighted, vacant structures in Evansville could be demolished this year if the City Council approves the first lump of funding for a land bank project.

Mayor Lloyd Winnecke is asking the council on Monday to move $1.7 million from the city's Riverboat cash fund to finance the program.

This is the mayor's second attempt to launch the program — the first attempt last year was shut down by the previous City Council.

Kelley Coures, the city's director of the Department of Metropolitan Development, said the need is great to address blight and a housing deficit in the city's urban core.

'If we don't do something now, in 10 years its going to be a lot worse,' Coures said.

The $1.7 million is a part of the $12.5 million the city received in early rent payments from Tropicana Evansville late last year.

The cash will launch the new Land Bank of Evansville.

The full five-year plan is to target nearly 2,000 blighted and vacant properties in town.

The first round of funding up for a vote Monday will focus on about 250 parcels the city will receive from Vanderburgh County Commissioners that never sold as part of the tax sale.

About half of those parcels have structures that will need to be demolished, said Carolyn Rusk, a Department of Metropolitan Development employee.

Rusk also leads the Evansville Brownfields Corp., a city-managed nonprofit that already acts a pseudo-land bank in the Haynie's Corner area. If the money is OK'd by the council, the Brownfields Corp. will assume the cash and the properties while the city forms a new nonprofit — the Land Bank of Evansville.

Money not spent on demolitions will fund the boarding and sealing of buildings awaiting demolitions, maintaining vacant lots, legal work as well as hiring two contract employees to work for the nonprofit to oversee the projects, she said.

The city has lost about $700,000 on city liens and property taxes on 217 of the properties, she said.

The idea of a land bank is to collect and maintain property, then find a developer or landowner to take over the property or properties.

Some of the vacant lots could go to adjacent neighbors, Rusk said. Others will be banked for developers, both private and nonprofit.

Building Commission Director Ron Beane said the growth of blighted properties in Evansville has consumed his office's resources.

In 2010, half of the work of Building Commission inspectors was on structures and the other half on addressing overgrown lawns, weeds and trash, Beane said.

'It's grown so much that 75 percent of the inspections we do are on the weeds and trash, so basically our time is being eaten up more by cleaning these vacant properties,' he said. The $1.7 million will be the 'first bite into a big apple of blight we have in this city,' he said.

Coures also painted a bleak picture of housing in Evansville.

A recent study Coures commissioned to review the state of housing in town showed that hardly any new houses are built within the city limits, and that the average home sale price are dropping in the urban core of the city, he said.

While housing construction booms in the county, the city suffers, and Coures said it's because vacant and blighted properties are tying up potential land for development and bringing down the value of neighborhoods, making new development and buying homes in the area unattractive.

Winnecke said if the funding is approved by council and OK'd by the Department of Local Government Finance, then the land bank process could start in mid to late summer. The goal is to have all of the dilapidated properties razed this year, he said.